Olympic Games all about China, Chinese

Leaders keen to impress, inspire their own people

April Rabkin, Chronicle Foreign Service

Published
4:00 am PDT, Friday, August 1, 2008

Chinese paramilitary police officers march into the National Stadium, known as the Bird's Nest, in Beijing, Wednesday, July 30, 2008. The stadium will host the opening and closing ceremonies and athletics competition for the games, which open on Aug. 8. Associated Press photo by Oded Balilty less

Chinese paramilitary police officers march into the National Stadium, known as the Bird's Nest, in Beijing, Wednesday, July 30, 2008. The stadium will host the opening and closing ceremonies and athletics ... more

Photo: Oded Balilty, AP

Photo: Oded Balilty, AP

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Chinese paramilitary police officers march into the National Stadium, known as the Bird's Nest, in Beijing, Wednesday, July 30, 2008. The stadium will host the opening and closing ceremonies and athletics competition for the games, which open on Aug. 8. Associated Press photo by Oded Balilty less

Chinese paramilitary police officers march into the National Stadium, known as the Bird's Nest, in Beijing, Wednesday, July 30, 2008. The stadium will host the opening and closing ceremonies and athletics ... more

Photo: Oded Balilty, AP

Olympic Games all about China, Chinese

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As years of intense preparation for the Olympics near a climax, the Chinese government's top priority seems to be proving itself to its own people. A sterile and controlled two-week event seems critical to making the right domestic impression, even at the cost of impressing the international audience.

In the buildup to the Olympics, the government's "heightened security" has included suppressing art exhibitions, closing off universities to visitors and kicking out expatriates, especially those from Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia - not to mention locking up dissidents despite loud protests by human rights advocates.

And the visa situation is so strict that hotels have complained of more vacancies this summer than last summer, despite anticipating a boom.

Games are about China

"In the view of so many officials here in Beijing, these Games are not about the world so much as about China - and that is the way that they are cast in the media here again and again," Russell Leigh Moses, an analyst of Chinese politics based in Beijing, said in an e-mail.

In Beijing, propaganda and state-guided pop culture portray the Olympics as the affirmation of a single nationalistic dream.

And although the nation is by no means unanimous, many Beijing residents do agree wholeheartedly with the official vision.

Deng Yang, 27, who moved to Beijing from a southern province to attend graduate school, echoed that idea. "The Olympics are for the Chinese people," she said.

She was right in more ways than one. She meant that torch protests - criticizing the government for human rights abuses - were seen in China as insulting Chinese citizens. But her statement was true on another level too: The Communist Party has taken the Olympics as an opportunity to impress its own citizens, first and foremost, with its domestic might and global clout.

"The flame has become a symbol of possession - of China's pride and place in the world. Protests against the relay that occurred overseas were presented in the state media here as the attempt of foreigners to deny the Chinese people that place," said Moses. "Officials here had a choice to cast matters differently, but that would have meant a very different mind-set than what currently prevails here in Beijing."

Seemed like a sure thing

June Teufel Dreyer, political science professor at the University of Miami, said the Olympics at first seemed like an automatic victory for the leadership on all fronts.

The International Olympic Committee's choice of Beijing, Dreyer said, was depicted "as a symbol of China arriving among the great nations (even though it had already arrived), enabling the party to be the hero that brought the Olympics to China."

But the pomp and propaganda that persuaded Beijing residents of the official Olympic narrative was less convincing abroad. And the government had to choose. Its choice was clear in the combat training of cadets assigned to protect the torch.

"Symbols are important in China. They were supposed to be paragons of manhood, young, physically fit, and so forth," Dreyer said of the torch guards. "But when they started hitting people, it destroyed the image."

Even so, the media's selection of images of the torch protests still fanned the flames of nationalism within China. Out of everything, what Chinese people saw the most was the image of the amputee in a wheelchair using her upper body to defend the torch from a lunging protester.

Human rights abuses

Those calling for a boycott drew attention to human rights abuses and the genocide in Darfur. But Dreyer said an actual boycott might have even backfired within China's regime, which has its own internal factions of hard-liners and progressives contending for power.

"It would relieve consciences," Dreyer said, but an unintended consequence of a boycott in the name of human rights might have been to "back the progressives into a corner" and "and shore up the hard-liners."

For millennia, political upheaval has been considered in China as not only inevitable but also guided by heaven. The dynastic cycle is as deeply embedded in the historical psyche as crusades are in Europe, and just as dreaded. Today, nearly six decades after the Communist Party won control of the nation, academics such as Susan L. Shirk in her book "Fragile Superpower," point out that the political system is more insecure than it appears.

Furthermore, thousands of farmer and soldier rebellions every year and, most recently, an estimated 30,000 people rioting over the way local officials handled a rape and murder case, point to instability and disaffection farther from the capital.

In recent weeks, shutting down factories and keeping private cars off the road shows that the government has enough authority and control to make a dent in the gross domestic product for the sake of an athletic event. With a smooth Olympics, the Communist Party can confirm its authority and its mandate.

As to how these Games will be remembered, Dreyer speculated, "a lot depends on what happens at the Olympics. But unless something major happens ... it's probably going to be remembered as successful, with the torch protests as hiccups. Maybe, 'The Olympics went off without a hitch, albeit in the context of heightened security.' "

In the "I Believe In Love" music video, there are puffy clouds, blue skies and happy pop stars clad in shirts that say "I {heart} China." With Beijing's Bird's Nest stadium as a backdrop, runners push through a white wall to create a billboard with an Olympics logo. To view the video, go to links.sfgate.com/ZEJJ.

Stand up! My love moves mountains. Only in running is there anticipation.

The future is written on the starting line, hey ya, hey ya...

Whether we win or lose, the important thing is to make it to the finish line. Stand up!

My love embraces the ocean. Transcendence doesn't happen in a moment.

The glory is after the finish line, hey ya, hey ya.

Tears can only express my victory when so much wind and rain have been endured.

The rainbow which now penetrates my soul tells what I have become.

Celebrate the life that I adore with you.

Hope to see a hero, colored by our wonder.

How many dreams have led me.

Courage combines with me, to win back my heart.

There is no distance between us.

In the competition between us.

Stand up! The finish line disappears.

Stand up! My love moves mountains.

In the music video for "Stand Up," a narrator apparently tells the story of Liu Changchun, China's first Olympian, a sprinter who competed as the nation's lone representative in Los Angeles in 1932. To view the video, go to links.sfgate.com/ZEJK.